Referendum fails in Moldova

Moldova has been without a pre-sident for a long time. Under the current constitution, he or she is to be elected by parliament. Yet neither the ruling liberal democratic coalition Alliance for European Integration (AEI) nor the Communists have a sufficient number of votes to elect the president. The ruling coalition sought to find a way out of the constitutional and political impasse by means of a referendum. Their idea was to elect president by popular vote.

Last Sunday’s referendum failed as turnout was about 30 percent, instead of the required minimum of 33 percent. Turnout was sufficient in just a few regions of Moldova, ranging from 34 to 43 percent. An all-time low — below ten percent — was registered in the autonomous region of Gagauzia. The Chisinau constituency showed a turnout of over 30 percent.

This result further complicated the already difficult political situation. The Communists had categorically opposed, and called for boycotting, the referendum. At first glance, they achieved their goal. But it is too early to regard this as a success for the Communists or other opposition factions. The ruling coalition is also partly to blame for the fact that a large part of the voters remained indifferent to this important constitutional event. The coalition failed to ensure proper informational and organizational support for the idea of a referendum and explaining its importance. Something was done, though. For example, the law was amended, the turnout threshold was lowered, and even the “silence day” was formally abolished — electioneering was in full swing in Chisinau on Sunday. Moreover, the number of polling stations abroad was doubled and 130,000 ballot papers were sent to them — in contrast to the 97,000 ballots sent abroad during the 2009 parliamentary elections. Naturally, this proved to be insufficient.

The referendum failure can be explained, to a large extent, by essential differences on some key issues within the coalition itself. While the acting President Mihai Ghimpu is an active advocate of Moldova-Romania integration, which he often reiterates, other parties in the alliance take a different view. It is these statements of Ghimpu that the Communists used to discredit the idea of a referendum and spread horror propaganda stories about Moldova’s future. Oddly enough, the ruling alliance parties took a rather slack attitude to this activity, and failed to take sufficient steps to neutralize the attempts to resuscitate communist propaganda myths, which they paid heavily for.

What then? Mihai Ghimpu has already said he is going to sign a decree on dissolving parliament and calling early elections. Doing so involves a serious risk. According to latest surveys, the Communists and the alliance parties can expect to obtain 50 and 40 percent of votes, respectively.

Naturally, Moscow was jubilant about the failed referendum. In the view of Aleksei Vlasov, director of Moscow University’s Center for Post-Soviet Studies, the referendum showed that the ruling alliance had lost credibility in the eyes of voters and the blame for the failure in fact lies with the acting President Mihai Ghimpu: “An inevitable disengagement will begin inside the alliance very soon.” Moscow is looking forward to this and is doing its utmost to make it happen as soon as possible. On his part, Konstantin Zatulin of the State Duma Committee for CIS Affairs believes that the continuing political crisis in Moldova will inevitably affect the country’s foreign policy. “In such a condition, Moldova is hardly a serious party to Transnistria settlement negotiations,” he says.

The aggravation of Moldova’s domestic crisis is as much to Moscow’s benefit as it is totally contrary to the goals of Ukrainian policies, particularly, towards Transnistria. This frozen conflict could erupt near our borders at any moment. Meanwhile, the rising temperature on the line of the Armenia-Azerbaijan conflict Nagorny-Karabakh clearly shows that wars begin when one wishes so and finish when one is able to do so.